There are many difficulties in identifying complex events, such as recognizing a set of specific human behaviors combined with interactions with inanimate objects. At the same time, the amount of digital data being produced with meaningful event data is increasing exponentially. A single location today can have 6,000 video feeds and 3,000 microphones or highly sensitive air sensors. Timely detection of meaningful events can be helpful in a number of ways, including saving lives and resources.
Today's solutions are incremental additions to existing methodologies. The primary solution is to have a Network Operating System (NOC), which is located physically near the appropriate sensor devices. Video feeds are typically viewed randomly by a 24/7 security staff. Some products can be installed to provide basic object detection, such as facial recognition, which in turn helps the security staff identify locations to investigate.
The field of object recognition has not advanced sufficiently to enable highly accurate detection of relevant data in real-time. Available systems come with the object detection systems built into the system, and today, there are only a few that are used for event detection. One issue that arises is that aspects of the object detection need to be defined prior to selling and deploying a product. Lack of confidence factors in object detection has led to an adversity in connecting multiple events, such as human behavior to specific usage of an identified object. Additionally, these events and behaviors may change rapidly over time, so that detection systems become quickly outdated. Because of the complexity in creating a framework around detecting objects, the best known generic system in widespread use is facial recognition. However, these systems have difficulty in processing images and providing highly accurate results in real-time. As new types of threats or actions are identified, these systems fall short of their ability to detect these new types of events. Due to the volume of real-time data, existing systems are used more in a forensics situation, rather than in attempting to provide real-time event data across most or all available feeds.